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The organ starts, everyone stands, and the first line comes up on the screen or in the book: Now thank we all our God.
And you are standing there with the one thing nobody in the room can see. The chair that is empty this year. The diagnosis you have not told anyone about yet. The job that went. You are expected to sing, and the song is cheerful, and you are not.
Here is what almost nobody mentions when Now Thank We All Our God gets sung in late November, or at a harvest festival, or at a wedding. The man who wrote it was not having a good year. He was living inside a walled town in the middle of a war, and within about a year of writing it, by the usual account, he was burying his neighbours by the dozen, and then his wife.
That changes what the hymn is asking of you. Quite a lot, actually.
Now Thank We All Our God Was Not Written in a Good Year
The words are by Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor. He was born in 1586 in Eilenburg, a small walled town in Saxony, in what is now eastern Germany, and he came back there to serve as a minister around the time the Thirty Years’ War began in 1618. He never left. He died there in 1649, a year after the war ended.
Because Eilenburg had walls, people fled into it. The town filled with refugees, and overcrowding brought what overcrowding always brought in that century: hunger, then disease. The standard hymn histories say the town was overrun by armies three times, and that one of those armies demanded a heavy payment from people who had almost nothing left.
Then came 1637, the plague year. The accounts passed down by hymn historians say that Rinkart was, by then, the only clergyman left alive in the town. The others had died or fled. He was conducting as many as forty or fifty funerals a day, and more than four thousand that year. One of them was his wife’s.
Those figures come from later retellings rather than from a register we can check, so hold them as the traditional account rather than a measured count. But the shape of the story is not disputed. One pastor, one small town, a war outside the walls and death inside them.
It Was Written as a Grace Before Meals
This is the detail that gets left out, and it is the one that matters most.
Rinkart did not write Now Thank We All Our God for a festival. He wrote it as a Tisch-Gebetlein, which is German for a “little table prayer.” A grace. Something short enough to say before a meal, at a time when the meal might be bread and not much else.
The usual dating puts the text around 1636, in a small devotional book of his, though hymn historians admit the exact date is debated and some place its publication much later, in 1663. Either way, it was written inside the war, not after it. By the time the peace treaty was signed in 1648, it was already being sung widely.
Read the first stanza again with that in mind. This is the English most churches sing, from Catherine Winkworth’s 1858 translation, in its common modern form:
Now thank we all our God, with heart and hands and voices,
who wondrous things has done, in whom his world rejoices;
who from our mothers’ arms has blessed us on our way
with countless gifts of love, and still is ours today.
“Countless gifts of love.” Written in a town running out of food. “Still is ours today.” Written by a man who did not know what tomorrow would take.
And notice what the first stanza never says. It never says I feel thankful. It says thank we. It is an instruction to a table, in the plural, from a man who may not have felt a thing.
The Verse Behind It Is Not the One You Would Guess
You might expect a Thanksgiving hymn to be built on a psalm. This one is not. The first two stanzas are drawn from a passage in Ecclesiasticus, also called Sirach, a book of Jewish wisdom written roughly two centuries before Jesus. Most Protestant Bibles today leave it out, but Luther’s German Bible printed it among the Apocrypha as good and useful to read, and the original 1611 King James Bible printed it too, between the Old and New Testaments.
Here is the passage in the King James wording:
“Now therefore bless ye the God of all, which only doeth wondrous things every where, which exalteth our days from the womb, and dealeth with us according to his mercy. He grant us joyfulness of heart, and that peace may be in our days in Israel for ever: That he would confirm his mercy with us, and deliver us at his time!” (Ecclesiasticus 50:22-24, KJV Apocrypha)
Lay the hymn over it and the seams show. “Doeth wondrous things” becomes “who wondrous things has done.” “From the womb” becomes “from our mothers’ arms.” “Joyfulness of heart” and “peace in our days” become “ever joyful hearts and blessed peace.” “Deliver us” becomes “free us from all ills.”
Then the third stanza does something different again. It is a German paraphrase of the Gloria Patri, the ancient “Glory be to the Father” that churches have said for well over a thousand years. So the hymn moves from a table grace, to an old blessing, to the oldest doxology the church has. Rinkart was not inventing thanks. He was borrowing it from people who had said it before him, in hard times of their own.
One more thing worth knowing, because you may have heard it. There is a famous story that the Prussian army sang this hymn on the battlefield after a victory in 1757, which is why the tune is sometimes called the Leuthen Chorale. Historians and musicologists now treat that story as a later invention, most likely Prussian propaganda. The hymn’s real origin is not a battlefield and a victory. It is a kitchen table and a loaf of bread in a town under siege.
The Turn: The Psalm That Holds Both Things at Once
So what was Rinkart doing, saying “countless gifts of love” over a thin meal in a dying town?
He was doing what Scripture has always meant by thanksgiving, and it is not what we usually mean by it. We treat thankfulness as a feeling you report. The Bible treats it as a list you recite.
Psalm 103 is the clearest place to see this. It opens with an instruction, not a mood:
“Bless the LORD, O my soul, and forget not all his benefits:” (Psalm 103:2, KJV)
The psalm writer is talking to his own soul, telling it what to do. Then comes the list. Forgiveness. Healing. Redemption from destruction. Lovingkindness. Tender mercies. It is an inventory of what God has done, said out loud, on purpose, so it will not be forgotten.
And here is the part that makes Psalm 103 the right psalm for a plague year. Thirteen verses later, the same psalm says this:
“As for man, his days are as grass: as a flower of the field, so he flourisheth. For the wind passeth over it, and it is gone; and the place thereof shall know it no more.” (Psalm 103:15-16, KJV)
Same psalm. Same breath, almost. “Forget not all his benefits” and “the wind passeth over it, and it is gone.” The psalm does not pick one. It holds the list of God’s gifts in one hand and the fact of the grave in the other, and it does not put either one down.
That is exactly what Rinkart’s little grace does. “Countless gifts of love” in the first stanza. “Guide us when perplexed, and free us from all ills” in the second. The gifts and the ills, in the same short song, by a man who would soon know more about the ills than anyone should.
Biblical thanksgiving was never a feeling you have to produce. It is a list you refuse to stop reciting.
Which means that when you stand in that pew, or sit at that table, and you cannot feel thankful, you have not failed the hymn. You are singing it the way it was written. Rinkart did not feel his way to “Now thank we all our God.” He said it, at a table, in a plural, so that the people around him could say it too, and so that he would not forget what was still true while everything else was being taken.
If this is your first holiday season with someone missing, there is a sibling piece on this site about how to be thankful when you don’t feel thankful, built on Habakkuk, who wrote “yet I will rejoice” while his body shook. Rinkart would have understood him completely.
What This Looks Like at Your Table This Year
For readers in the United States, Thanksgiving falls on 26 November this year, and this hymn will be sung in thousands of churches the Sunday before. In Germany it belongs to the harvest festival. In Britain it turns up at harvest services and weddings. But the hymn was never about one country’s calendar. It was about a meal, and everyone has one of those today.
So here is the permission the hymn gives you. You do not have to arrive at the table feeling grateful. You can arrive carrying exactly what you are carrying, and still say the list out loud. Not a performance. A recitation. The things that are still true, named one at a time, the way the psalm does it and the way Rinkart did it over bread.
And it can be short. Rinkart’s original was a little table prayer, and the Bible itself never sets a minimum length for a grace. If you have wondered how short a grace is allowed to be, the answer is: shorter than you think.
If what you are carrying right now does not even have a name yet, only a weight, our free What Stage of Grief Am I In? walk-through can help you put words to it. And if it is the music itself that undoes you this time of year, you are not alone in that either. One of the best-loved Christmas carols was also written in grief, and it was built to hold it.
Actions to Take
- Write a three-line grace. Before your next meal, write three things that are still true about God this year. Not three things that went well. Three things that are still true. Read it out loud over the food, even if you are eating alone. Two minutes.
- Sing or say the first stanza with the real date in mind. Find the words to Now Thank We All Our God on your phone and read the first stanza slowly, knowing it was written as a grace in a besieged town. Notice which line is hardest for you to say right now. That line is where your honest prayer is.
- Say the plural out loud to one person. Rinkart wrote “thank we,” not “thank I.” Text or call one person who is also having a hard year and say one true thing you are both still being given. You are not fixing anything. You are keeping the list from being forgotten, together.
Journaling Prompts
- Psalm 103 holds “forget not all his benefits” and “the wind passeth over it, and it is gone” in the same psalm. Which of those two lines have you been living in, and which one have you been avoiding?
- Rinkart wrote “countless gifts of love” while his town went hungry. What is one gift that is still true in your life that grief has made hard to see?
- The hymn says “thank we,” not “thank I.” Who is at your table this year who might need you to say the list out loud first?
A Prayer for When You Have to Sing and You Cannot Feel It
God, I am standing here with the song in front of me and the loss inside me, and I cannot make the two match. I am not going to pretend. But I will say what is still true: you have not left, you have carried me this far, and I am still here. Help me say the list even when I cannot feel it. And hold the part of me that is still just grieving. Amen.
Discussion Question
Do you think a hymn like this should be sung as a feeling or as a statement of fact? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
Share This
- Now Thank We All Our God was written as a grace before meals, in a walled town under siege, by a pastor who went on to bury his own wife in the plague year. It was never a song about a good year.
- The Thanksgiving hymn does not say “I feel thankful.” It says “thank we.” It is an instruction to a table, not a mood report. You can sing it exactly as you are.
- Psalm 103 says “forget not all his benefits” and, a few verses later, “the wind passeth over it, and it is gone.” Same psalm. Biblical thanks holds both.
Questions and Answers About Now Thank We All Our God
Who wrote Now Thank We All Our God and when?
The German text, “Nun danket alle Gott,” was written by Martin Rinkart, a Lutheran pastor in the walled town of Eilenburg, Saxony, during the Thirty Years’ War. It is usually dated to around 1636, though hymn historians note the exact date is debated and some place its publication as late as 1663. The tune most churches use was published by Johann Crüger in 1647. The familiar English version is Catherine Winkworth’s translation of 1858.
Was Now Thank We All Our God really written during a plague?
It was written inside the Thirty Years’ War, in a besieged and overcrowded town already suffering famine and disease, with the worst plague year, 1637, following close behind. The traditional account, passed down by hymn historians, says Martin Rinkart was the only surviving clergyman in Eilenburg in 1637 and conducted as many as forty or fifty funerals a day, more than four thousand that year, including his wife’s. These numbers come from later retellings rather than a verifiable register, so they are best treated as the traditional account.
What Bible verse is Now Thank We All Our God based on?
The first two stanzas are based on Ecclesiasticus 50:22-24, also called Sirach, a book found in the Apocrypha. In the King James wording it begins, “Now therefore bless ye the God of all, which only doeth wondrous things every where, which exalteth our days from the womb, and dealeth with us according to his mercy.” The hymn’s third stanza is a paraphrase of the Gloria Patri, the ancient “Glory be to the Father” doxology.
Why was Now Thank We All Our God written as a grace before meals?
Martin Rinkart originally titled the text “Tisch-Gebetlein,” German for “little table prayer.” It was meant to be said before a meal, which is why the first stanza is short and simple and names God’s everyday gifts: being blessed “from our mothers’ arms” with “countless gifts of love.” Only the later stanzas widen out to ask for peace, guidance and freedom from ills, which reflects the pressures of the war going on around the town.
Did the Prussian army sing Now Thank We All Our God after the Battle of Leuthen?
That story is widely repeated but not reliable. It claims the whole Prussian army sang the hymn after its victory at Leuthen in 1757, which is why the tune is sometimes called the Leuthen Chorale. Historians and musicologists now regard the account as a later invention, most likely Prussian propaganda. The documented origin of the hymn is a table grace written by a pastor in a besieged town, not a battlefield celebration.
